Religious Freedom Daily

Everyday if everyone reading here sent one article on religious freedom to one person, shared one article on a social media site … just one small educational act, everyone here would be participating in protecting a fundamental freedom that we’re otherwise on the brink of surrendering.

The Catholic Church, like other religious entities, attempts to convince people of the validity of its teachings. The government’s efforts to force the church to undermine its own teachings carry the force of law.

Religious freedom is not just the right to, as the Times puts it, “preach that contraception is sinful and rail against Mr. Obama for making it more readily available” (though in fact, the Church is not seeking to curtail the availability of contraception to the general public). It is also the right not to have its institutions forced to either pay for or facilitate the receipt of services that run contrary to its principles.

It bears repeating that one needn’t share the Vatican’s views on contraception to understand that a government dictat that would coerce churches to dispense it is a violation of their religious liberty. Nor would a so-called “compromise” that would maintain the imposition but shift its cost reduce the threat to freedom. But the fact, as the Times points out, that even most Catholics support contraception does not mean the church and those who agree with it should be stripped of their rights. Allowing their institutions to abstain from providing contraception coverage does not make the church a law unto itself or impose its views on others; it merely leaves them alone. Nor does the government’s obligation to advance a “compelling interest” grant it the latitude to violate those rights. Those who wish to receive free contraception don’t have to work for the church. The idea that a fanciful constitutional right to such services should trump religious freedom is the product of a mindset in which all freedoms can be annulled for the sake of some mythical and unproven greater good.

Far from the church behaving in a partisan manner by imposing the president’s fiat, it is simply standing up for itself against a government that is determined to squelch dissent on the administration’s unpopular signature legislative achievement. The Supreme Court will determine ObamaCare’s fate. But the determined campaign to silence the church and to delegitimize its attempt to defend its rights will resonate for some time.

And you may have already seen my syndicated column this week on the new archbishop of Baltimore, William Lori, a mild-mannered sort, calling this Obama administration attack on religious liberty a “train wreck.”

We can turn this train around. And this fight doesn’t end if the Supreme Court throws out the health-care law, now that we have seen the radical audacity of a first term …